Uhm... none of the webcasts I listen to have paid any attention to the RIAA nor have they had the RIAA pay attention to them.
So... fuck em.
There's less [no] regulations to webcasts than radio, and it's a whole lot easier to set them up. Webcasts are exponentially multiplying as are their listeners.

I don't see how they can hope to regulate webcasting when webcasts overall are much much larger than filesharing... you know? The thing used across several networks with terabytes of data across each one, most of the data being illegaly (by one standard or another) shared or acquired across millions of users? Yeah that. Good luck RIAA. I'd wish you the best, but I really don't.

Kill the RIAA

Pays artists 60% like they deserve instead of the RIAAs ridiculous 3-8%. Allows user to listen and download music from bands they like for free, and you support bands you like in increments of $10 (from what I understand) for some free gear. Once the band reaches their goal of $50,000 they it gets spent on the best recording studios and best producers, and the people who 'invested' in the band previously get a free CD and a portion of their profits from CD sales.

Re: What I never understood...

I'm fuzzy about details, but I read that the contract for the old rates ran out and they hadn't decided on new rates, so everyone had to agree to pay, retroactively, the new rates when they were decided or stop playing the music.